Monday

No Denying

I'm pretty sure I read these results a while ago, but there's an opinion piece that just appeared in the NYT that's worth noting:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases...

What makes this statement of the obvious noteworthy is that the aforementioned Berkeley project was funded by those teabagger-backing and propaganda-enabling Koch brothers. (Evidently they didn't control the study, and they deserve credit for that.) So it'll be interesting to see how the RWS™ spin this one. And -- so you'd think, anyway -- it might make those who tend to deny facts simply because "liberals" espouse them reconsider their reflexive rejection of all such things. This report gives hope that even for teabaggRs there's a level of reality that overwhelms willful ignorance. Time will tell; if so, the question is, will it be too late? Will The Rominee flip once again? Will he show regard for truth, even when his base base demands otherwise? He never has.

So we can safely predict it won't happen; truth, and facts, are but a small diversion to be avoided like poop in a pathway. Still, they're gonna have to do some mighty fine dissembling with this, given the source. I find it amusing; and I look forward to hearing from the usual suspecters.